Electrical switching apparatuses exist in the field of power electronics, which include power transistors and a control device for driving these transistors suitable for delivering a control signal through one or several output interfaces. Such apparatuses are for example known including power transistors made from metal oxide semiconductor field effect technology, known by the acronym MOSFET, and made from silicon carbide. It is possible for these transistors to be grouped together in pairs within a power component, or unitary power pack.
In applications such as power converters, the various power transistors distributed in the power components must be controlled in a synchronized manner relative to one another. It is desirable for the driver control device to include a dedicated output interface, or “output voltage buffer”, for each of the power transistors. The use of a dedicated output voltage buffer for each of these transistors makes it possible to obtain satisfactory control performance levels.
However, this solution has the drawback of being extremely expensive. Furthermore, it causes a significant bulk. The physical integration of a driver control device including several output voltage buffers is therefore extremely difficult, or even impossible for applications that require a miniaturized power converter with a smaller bulk.
To offset this drawback, it is known to use a single output voltage buffer that is shared by several power components commanded in parallel. The respective power transistors are thus connected in parallel with one another to the driver control device, via several cables or electrically conductive tracks. Such a solution is for example described in patent application FR 2,990,312 A1.
This known device is not, however, fully satisfactory. In order for the various transistors to be commanded in a synchronized manner relative to one another, it is mandatory for the cables or electrically conductive tracks to have a same length. The power transistors must therefore be placed equidistantly from the output voltage buffer. This complicates the arrangement of the various components of the electrical switching apparatus. This further requires moving the output voltage buffer far enough away from the various power components to leave enough space to arrange the cables or electrically conductive tracks, which results in increasing the stray electrical inductance due to the cabling. The presence of such a stray inductance may cause an uncontrolled oscillation of the control signal supplied by the driver control device and create malfunctions of the electrical switching apparatus, or even damage it irreversibly.